So… VMware’s NSX is super awesome! I’m one of those weird guys that find playing with networking and virtualization on a Monday night more fun and exciting than a weekend in Vegas. Ok, maybe not so much, but still somehow I managed to stay up past midnight deploying an NSX “Lab” just by messing with it. I say screw the guide, I learn better by just pressing buttons and breaking things… I’m not doing this for a client so what gives? Let’s poke…
After some fun I’ve gone from just knowing concepts of SDN to a fully usable network running on top of VMware NSX. It’s complete with:
- Single 6.2 controller
- VXLAN transport on a Force10 S60 with PIM and IGMP snooping enabled
- Since I already had Distributed vSwitches, it was very easy to provision the transport
- Multicast Transport Zone and segment ID
- Single NSX Edge running OSPF connecting to the S60 core and redistributing connected networks
- Single logical switch (for now)
- Two VM’s on two different hosts to test connectivity
- Smiles
Captured live flows while downloading a CentOS ISO from a mirror site just to test speeds.
So far i’m very impressed with what NSX can do, and i’ve only scratched the surface. Think stretched networks over L3, per-VM firewall policies both at Layer 3 and Layer 2 levels, Logical routers between virtual switches, each with its own ACLs, HA edges, so many cool things!. Only 59 days left…
It’s almost 1am and I should really go to sleep now. Good night.